


All in Good Time

by mylifeisloki



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, High School AU, Tumblr Prompt, skinny!steve makes an appearance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-14 03:02:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2175624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylifeisloki/pseuds/mylifeisloki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve negotiates losing his best friend, falling in love with a girl who doesn't even know he exists and a tremendous growth spurt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All in Good Time

“…And I realize you’ve probably been asked a dozen times by guys twice my size and everything, but I think you’re really beautiful and I thought I might as well ask because I’ve been _trying_ to ask since I first saw you.”

Steve, standing all of five-feet-seven-inches, took a deep breath as he cut himself off, having not breathed properly for the last five minutes while he’d rambled on and on in front of Natasha in his quest to ask her out. He’d had a crush on her for ages. Back in the 9th grade, he’d walked into school beside Bucky as usual and she was right there, sitting alone on the stone to the right of the main door, wearing black from head to toe and reading a book in Russian. Steve was smitten immediately, going quiet and staring to the point where Bucky nudged his arm, threw one arm around Steve’s shoulders and dragged him up to her.

“Hey there,” he’d said, offering a charming smile and squeezing Steve’s shoulders until he smiled too. The thing was that Steve had known from the very start that he had no shot with her. Even without the fact that he was short of breath just from looking at her, Natasha’s pretty green eyes were focused on Bucky alone. That in itself wasn’t surprising in the slightest, to be honest. The number of girls who’d fallen for Bucky was neck in neck with the number of girls who’d basically treated Steve like he was invisible. Steve excused himself very quickly after she said hello, heading into the building alone to find their homeroom. When Bucky joined him fifteen minutes later and two minutes after he was supposed to, Steve just knew.

And it wasn’t like anything had changed when Bucky moved away at the end of the year. Steve had been beside himself and he’d watched Natasha say goodbye to his best friends in such a way that he was sure wouldn’t be the case if _he_ had been the one moving away. After that day, they hadn’t even spoken, despite the fact that he _knew_ Bucky spoke to her sometimes, and spoke to him very often. But the 10 th grade was passing by and with every class that Steve was lucky enough to have with her, he fell more and more in love. Could someone fall in love with another person they’d barely spoken to?

Maybe he’d barely spoken to her, but he knew things too. Steve knew that Natasha loved to dance. He knew she liked classical music. He knew she took her tea with milk and sugar and that she preferred tea to coffee. He knew that she had a beautiful, sultry voice.

Well, Steve wasn’t going to just forget about how he felt about Natasha and move on because he was scared. That wasn’t the kind of person he was. So he plucked up as much courage as he could and approached her in the hall one day, his sketchbook held in one arm along with two books for school. He’d started on a good note, saying hello and asking her how she was—and then he’d launched into the rambling that went on for ages before it finally, thankfully stopped. By then, he was blushing fiercely, but he’d finally done it. He’d asked Natasha out!

“No, thank you.” She said it plainly, not like she was making fun of him, but like she just didn’t want to go out with him- ever, the voice in the back of his head filled in. Probably not in a thousand years or more. God, he was such an idiot for even asking.

Admittedly, his heart just kind of plummeted. Steve blinked once in panic and stepped back. He was about to just apologize for bothering her and be on his way, but he tripped on a very strategically placed foot behind him and fell, his books scattering. The girls standing beside Natasha giggled at him and Steve clambered up, grabbing awkwardly for his books before basically running in the other direction. Maybe he was a headstrong kind of guy, but pride only got a person so far and after all the time he’d wasted saying nothing… to get that kind of rejection was just a little more than he could take. He wasn’t blaming her! God, no. She had every right to say no and he would respect her wishes, keep away from her and not push for it at all. But he went home early that day, fearing the teasing he knew would come.

The bullying, which Steve had dealt with all the way back in elementary school and on, continued the next day without fail and also made him look like a complete idiot in front of Natasha multiple times. The day after he asked her out, they cornered him in the locker room after gym and told him he was stupid, that he could never land a girl like Natasha. She was too good for him.

“But a guy like me,” one of them continued, big hand braced on Steve’s chest to keep him against the lockers. “That’s the kind of guy she’ll open her legs for.”

Steve made a face and struggled to get out of the other guy’s grip. “Good thing she won’t have to open them that far,” he countered. “She’ll probably be too busy laughing.” He smirked and braced himself for the beating that came after. He had a big mouth. He said what was on his mind. He… tried and undoubtedly failed to protect girls who were being harassed by big, burly jocks, getting his ass handed to him each and every time. The fact was that he had nothing to offer her. He wasn’t handsome or strong like Bucky or Thor, he wasn’t a genius like Tony or Bruce, and he wasn’t even funny like Clint. Hell, he didn’t even have enough money to support a family. In fact, his family was one of the poorest in their grade, though he tried to hide it well.

The only time anyone ever let him go a day without a reminder of how small he was happened to be when word got around that his mother was sick. All of a sudden, Steve’s life was crowded by words like ‘chemo’ and ‘radiation’ and ‘terminal’. No chance of survival, they said. Make her comfortable. Steve took three weeks off of school to watch his mother die. She passed on a Thursday, in the middle of the night.

Thankfully, he was able to keep up with his work and didn’t return to school until the last day, to get his report card. Since he’d turned sixteen and they owned the house they lived in, he was able to declare independence and avoided going into the foster care system for a year. He also had a very small payout from his mother’s estate and got a job as soon as he could to pay the bills and support himself. Steve felt very alone that summer, without Bucky or his mother, the two people who had been closest to him for his whole life. In order to deal with her passing, Steve threw himself into his work at a small daycare where they needed help with arts and crafts and spent a lot of his free time going on long walks around the city. Honestly, he wasn’t sure whether or not he just wanted to get away or was hoping for an asthma attack to end the misery.

But something unexpected happened. Instead of losing his breath, he gained endurance. Steve began to jog instead of walk, and then _run_ instead of jog. He tested himself one night by doing push ups on his living room floor and never stopped, doing a routine without fail, every morning and every night. He hadn’t even realized how much he was growing until he got up one morning and nearly banged his head because he had to _duck_ to get into the shower. That summer, Steve went from one hundred pounds soaking wet to a solid two hundred pounds of muscle.

It was therefore quite the understandable shock to everyone’s system when he showed up in September, over six feet tall and wearing a shirt that was way too small for him because he didn’t have the extra money to buy more than the several pairs of jeans and the beaten up leather jacket he’d splurged on. Steve held his head high as he made his way down the hallway, each and every eye turning to stare as he walked past.

“Is that _Rogers_?”  
“Steroids, man. I’m telling you.”  
”Was he always that cute?”

Steve ignored them all. When he got to his locker, he put his books away and let his jacket slide off, putting that away as well while various people stopped behind him to stare. Turning to face them, he offered a sheepish smile and closed his locker, two books and his sketchbook in hand as usual. “Um. Good morning?”

He didn’t get much of a response, so he just walked off and made his way to homeroom, where he slid into a seat near the window and tried to relax. It felt strange, to not be pushed into anything as he walked down the hall or called names when he came into class- strange, but kind of amazing. And then, all of a sudden, Steve realized a bonus of this growth spurt of his.

“Is this seat taken?”

Raising his head, Steve looked up to find himself staring into two very familiar green eyes. He swallowed, feeling every inch the little guy he’d been last year. “No,” he answered slowly. “No, it’s not.” She smiled— _smiled—_ at him and Steve got his goofy look on his face right away. Of course, he did realize that she was only talking to him because he was different now, but for the moment, he didn’t care.

He also didn’t care later on, when they were told to work in pairs and Natasha pulled her desk right over to his, her arm pressing against his. He didn’t care when she invited him to sit with her at lunch either, regardless of the strange looks he got from her friends. What he _did_ care about was when he got nailed with a ball of aluminum foil on the back of his head and turned to find the members of the football team, his usual tormentors, laughing and pointing at him.

“Look!” one of them yelled. “The freak turned into an even bigger freak!”

Steve glared, standing up and facing them with his arms crossed over his chest. “Say that to my face,” he challenged. One of them got up, as they always did, and got right in his face, continuing the verbal abuse.

“I’ll stick kick your ass up and down this cafeteria, Rogers,” he threatened. “You’re still a pussy. Just because you’re bigger doesn’t mean you’re any better than you were before.” He accompanied his words with a hard shove to Steve’s chest, sending him stumbling back just two steps. Steve remained calm.

“Hit me,” he challenged, letting his arms fall. “Go ahead. Hit me.”

The _second_ the other boy raised his fist with every intention of hitting Steve square in the jaw, Steve punched hard and hit him first, knocking him right off his feet. To this day, he would claim that the look on Natasha’s face, accompanied by how _quiet_ everyone got, was absolutely worth the day of suspension and sitting in the principal’s office for the rest of the day.

From then on, he and Natasha steadily grew closer with each day they spent passing notes, Steve accompanying his words with silly little cartoons. They ate lunch together almost every day and eventually, Steve worked up enough courage to ask her over to his house for pizza and a movie. Quite unexpectedly, she asked about his mother and Steve told her all about how loving and warm and wonderful she had been, even going so far as to show Natasha a picture or two. They talked about how strange it was for Steve to be living alone, even now, and they discussed what it had been like for Natasha to move to the States from Russia just before starting high school. They talked about things Steve hadn’t discussed since he’d had Bucky around; what he wanted to do in life, his art, how it felt to have those people in school push him around every day. Nearly a year later, he considered Natasha his best friend and while he’d watched her date several other boys- Clint, most notably- he never really stopped being as interested in her as he had been way back in the beginning.

What they _never_ spoke about was how Natasha had refused him that one time, and the fact that she was seemingly only hanging around with him now because he was a little more attractive. Steve never brought it up and Natasha never mentioned it either. It didn’t even bug him because after a while, he figured she wouldn’t have stuck around if she didn’t really like him all that much. Looks only went so far. She wouldn't have watched old movies with him or let him draw her (blushing furiously the entire time) or talked to him in school, in the open... if she didn't really like him.

In fact, he was so sure of himself that he said nothing even when she kissed him one day, right on the lips at a library table while they were supposed to be studying. Nothing stopped him from kissing her back, nothing prevented him from letting her walk home with him and allowing her to crawl onto his lap on the couch. Nothing stopped him from loving her the way he did. Not even the cruel remarks, the boys who reminded him that she only liked him for his body or just wanted to use him for sex, got to him. Steve was so blindingly in love that nothing mattered other than how Natasha treated him when they were curled up on his couch, sharing a bowl of popcorn.

He celebrated his seventeenth birthday with her, watching fireworks in Coney Island while they held hands on the beach. It was there, laying on the sand once the display had finished, that he decided to ask her.

“Hey, Nat?” She hummed her acknowledgment, shifting a little to rest her head against his shoulder. “You know back in 10th? Why did you say no when I asked you out that time? Was it because.. because..”

She sat up and for a moment, Steve thought she might say the obvious- because he’d been entirely unappealing. Natasha surprised him like she always did, leaning down to kiss him on the lips and looking down at him with a warm smile. “Because I was a sixteen year old girl,” she explained. “A sixteen year old girl who’d just moved here and wanted to fit in.” She leaned down again, pressing their lips together for another moment or two. “I was stupid.”

Steve chuckled, leaning up to tuck her hair behind her ear. “Better late than never, right?” She answered him with a smile and nodded quickly, leaning in for one more kiss before moving to lay down beside him again, their fingers laced together on the sand.

 


End file.
